Feb 20
We traveled about 16 nm across the Bay of Banderas to visit a little town called Yelapa, accessible only by boat or very rough road.
Because of its inaccessibility, this pueblo is basically car-free! The village is built along the side of a fairly steep hill and narrow cobblestone lanes snake along between the buildings. There are lots of tourists but that doesn’t spoil the town’s beauty. There is quite a large waterfall above the town and another series of rapids and pools farther down the valley. To reach them, we walked about an hour and a half down the lane, which turned from cobble to dirt as it got further from the centre of town. We passed by little palapa-roofed homes, many with beautiful gardens of flowers and plants with bright foliage, planted in everything from plastic buckets to an upside-down outboard engine cover! There are a few ATVs but many people still use horses (they were little – possibly burros?) to get around which was wonderful to see! Every few hundred metres one would be hitched to a tree waiting patiently for its owner. At one point we had to dive off the trail to make way for a young guy herding about four cows and a couple of horses, trailed by several of the ubiquitous and very well-behaved Mexican perros (dogs).
If you look closely at the bottom right of the photo, there is a little flurry of animal activity – a rooster in the process of kicking some little doggie butt.